Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire store bought catfish bait???

Chicken livers sprayed with wd40

Cut eel or cut shiners or even creek chubs

Turkey liver is tougher, much toucher and stays on the hook better than chiggin libber

Catalpa worms if you can find em.

Ive got about 20 trees i planted a few years back..

They have worms, but eat the leaves in no time…


City folk love the trees…

Ornamental… real beau-t-ful…

If I can catch skip jack on the river, it's a preferred bait. Used to use shad guts but can't catch that many shad anymore. Any kind of guts will work. You might get some free from a butcher. I've gutted my catfish as I've caught them and used it as bait. Real good to go ahead and clean and store on ice if it's going to be a big catch trip. I've caught a few hundred pounds of catfish in a night before. Ran 70-100 jugs up 5 miles of lake.

Nearly too damn much like work.

I have used Bowkers in years past. Don't get it on you it stinks, bad.

I’ve tried the Berkley Power catfish bait but can’t get it to stay on the hook!

I got cheap hot dogs and mixed em in that garlic that comes pulverized in oil, garlic powder, and a couple packages of kook aid. Had a great coupla evenings on those this summer they brought in some big cats and a couple carp too!

Used to fish with an older coworker from Arkansas named Hap (Catfish) Hunter. He made his own stink bait and we'd caught big old channel cats. Hang on to your pole.

Took a long time to hear his recipe: Cow brains, limburger cheese, and clove of anise extract. Let that mixture sit out in the sun and with a piece of foam on your hook dip it in the stinking mixture. Drop the hook with a slip sinker next to a tree and hang on to your pole.

I am allergic to fish, and cannot eat it.


That being said I can fish and gut all damn day. I love running trot lines in the Rappahannock, and the James when I can.

I use managers special food lion chicken. Whatever parts are on sale. Works great.

Talked to an old timer once

He only used Zote brand soap for bait.

Anyone who uses store-bought catfish bait instead of his own, super-secret, never-fail mixture is not a real catfisherman.

Every old timer around here used to have a bucket with a lid that contained his own secret blend of never ending “world’s best” dough bait. All I ever heard of contained various amounts of cottonseed meal, cheese, blood, milk, and usually either peaches or apricots. Add a little water and stir with a stick and Viola!, you have dough bait. To get on everything to include your rod handle and reel.

And every one of those alchemists that made the stuff had stories of tearing up boats full, of channel cats, usually on a creek rise, or before a storm, or pre spawn. The same times worms, or liver, or minnows, or crawdads, or about anything will tear them up.

The best bait you can buy at the store if you’re serious about catfishing will be a good throw net.

Catch bait immediately before you fish and try to keep them alive as long as possible. Shad and skipjack are unbeatable for blues, the bigger the chunks the bigger the blues you’ll catch.

For flatheads live perch are the ticket, though the smaller ones will bite on crawdads and frogs, if you want to catch big ones use a live bluegill about the size of a small flapjack. Live crappie are arguably better but not legal in some places. Big flatheads will bite small bullheads too, and they stay alive a long time on the hook.

White or Sand bass generally suck for bait whether cut or live.

If you want big cats you have to target the predator species. Channels are small mouthed scavengers and slow growers. Flatheads and blues have bigger mouths and grow much faster, the bigger they get the bigger the prey they can fit in their mouth and the faster they’ll grow. Either is superior table fare to channels as well with flatheads being top of the heap for catfish in NA and maybe in the running for freshwater fish in NA period.

“……when I walked in I can’t even begin to describe just what I smelled,
Lord, was it the Catfish bait or something Bubba had ate? Was it those pickled eggs on the shelf?”

They are called “Catawba Worms’.

We used to bait our trot lines with field birds we’d shoot walking the cornfields. Between those and whole perch we had plenty.

A shooting buddy uses the mushed-up hotdogs but with strawberry jello. I’ve tried cut bluegills and shrimp, plus some Whatamart bait to no avail. The wife caught one big enough for our dinner on a a half-inch piece of earthworm another fisherman gave her.

A few years back I saw a bass fisherman catch a 10.5 pounder on a red plastic lizard. I suspect that “shot placement” is more important than the bait.

Yup, just like an egg sack.

I always found shrimp or crayfish to work better anyways.

Around here, folks just say “your trees got any ‘togga worms? “

😂😂